


Crux

by Livia_LeRynn



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, BUCKETS OF ANGST, Caregiving, F/F, F/M, Ghost family, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, It's a bittersweet symphony this life, Max's ghosts are real, Other, Polyamory, Remix, Sad with a Happy Ending, Stargazing, Supernatural Elements, Wasteland medicine, ghost au, inexplicable healing powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-15 03:59:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11797938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livia_LeRynn/pseuds/Livia_LeRynn
Summary: After her death on the Fury Road, The Valkyrie wanders alone until she finds Max and her only chance to get to the Citadel and to Furiosa. Remix of Ladyarcherfan3's Triangulum, now with more ghosts.





	1. Acrux

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyarcherfan3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyarcherfan3/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Triangulum](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5325506) by [ladyarcherfan3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyarcherfan3/pseuds/ladyarcherfan3). 



> This work is not part of any of my existing timelines.

Valkyrie knew she was dead the instant she regained awareness. It felt very much like opening her eyes, only not. She became inundated with sights and sounds as if she were a river dammed and then opened. She would have thought being a ghost would have made her fast, and that she would no longer need a bike, but the war party raced onward, leaving its trails of dust to blow through her as she stood alone in the middle of the road. 

She wandered about the wreckage for some indiscernible amount of time as she searched for other remnants of her people. She found her bike with its worn leather seat and prized tapestry saddlebags, but she found that her hands passed through them. She found many other corpses but no other ghosts, and so she started heading west.

At least she no longer ached. After nearly 13500 days of existence, her body had become worn in subtle ways, muscles that protested movement, joints that swelled and crackled after days of climbing the fishing tower, but now she moved as lightly and smoothly as she ever had. Her image still bore the lines and spots of her many days and the scars of her many battles but only as decoration, perhaps illustrations to her story. She walked for days without stopping, if one could actually call her motion walking. Her legs moved, propelling her forward, but her feet never touched the ground. 

When she came upon the pile of rubble that blocked the pass according to The Fool's plan, she passed through it without need for door or window. She glided right under the noses of the Rock Riders as they drained the life fluids from the War Rig and tore away her most valuable parts much like a colony of ants dismantling their dinner. She noted which corpses she found within the Rig and more importantly, which ones she didn’t: her Furiosa was not among them. She looked for other ghosts there, and though she found many bodies among the wreckage, she found no other like herself.

Valkyrie kept moving, but she wondered why she alone became what she had become. Maybe she just needed to see for herself, to know what had happened. Maybe that was all she needed for the warm arms of the Resting Mother to enfold her. All that remained of her people had blindly followed their long lost daughter and the man she called _Fool_ into an uncertain sunset, but they had burned with a new sense of purpose as they cackled at every flame and stray bullet. _Home_ , Maadi had said, was not a place to be found but a place to be made. So Valkyrie followed a single set of tire tracks towards the unseen prize she had died to win.

Some time later, she heard a the rumble of a small bike approaching from behind. She sprung to action out of instinct, turning to face it, calculating its trajectory as if she still had a body to protect. Then she chuckled to herself for reacting so foolishly; the bike would just pass through her as she had through the Rig. She was but a fog rolling over the land. She eased from her defensive crouch and waited for the bike to pass, but it never did.

The rider stopped and starred ahead through the black cloth wrapped around his face. She knew the man instantly. “Fool!” She said without thinking. 

At least he made it; she scanned the road behind him for movement. Why was he alone? Why was he going the wrong way? Had she somehow missed the Citadel? His eyes met hers with a certain unmistakable and exasperated recognition. Then he shook his head and turned, heading off road. 

She waved her arms and then hurled herself into his new path. “Wait!”

He grunted when she landed on his lap. She’d passed through his handle bars but smacked against him, hard enough to bruise. He was solid, sturdy, and real. As she sat there stunned, he stopped the bike and tossed her to the ground. 

Valkyrie rolled out of habit, gliding over the ground. “You can see me,” she said once she’d landed. He could more than just see her.

“His name is Max,” shouted a child’s voice beside her, and Valkyrie looked up to see a girl with dark curls hovering as though sitting cross-legged on a rock.

“Thank you,” said Valkyrie to the child less for the man’s name and more for the simple acknowledgement that she still existed. “Max…” she started. He was about to ride away. She decided that how or why he alone could see and touch her was less important than the one question burning away at her mind. “Did we win?” 

He pulled down his scarf and finally spoke. "We won." 

He had a wild and hollow look about his eyes, the same as before. That’s how Valkyrie knew him; he was full and empty all at once - so full he twitched with it, whatever _it_ was. Valkyrie had sensed the same bundle of panic and sorrow in Furiosa the last time she saw her. Furiosa had managed to hide hers better, but it was still there. It was like a language that she and this Max shared but Valkyrie could only recognise.

"And Furiosa?" Her name came out slowly at first and then quickly like a tyre finding traction. 

He shifted and averted his gaze. "Alive. At the Citadel." He fidgeted with the wrapping on the handlebars. 

"Then why are you here?" she asked, only then noticing how grey and sunken he was about the eyes. There was dried blood in his hair and on the lapel of his jacket. 

"Wasn't my place."

“Could you…” Not having an actual throat didn't make words any less apt to get caught in it. “Could you help me find my way there?” He said nothing, and Valkyrie looked to the girl. “Help.”

The girl child swung herself to standing and then walked in front of Max. She pulled on his left hand, which was an angry red colour beneath its filthy wrapping that passed for bandages. He yelped, jerking his hand to his chest. 

“Sometimes he just needs a tug.” Said the child before tucking herself into Max’s pack. 

“Your hand,” Valkyrie ventured, “Can I see it?” She approached slowly this time with her hands in front of her as one might a frightened child or a wounded animal. She didn't know what she would be able to do in her current state, but the girl clearly wanted her attention drawn to the wound. 

He studied Valkyrie suspiciously than gingerly removed the wrapping. His hand shook in the open air and burned hot with infection. She remembered it had been wrapped when she first saw him, but she’d never gotten a good look. Now his smallest finger was swollen up, probably broken or at least sprained, and there was a pair of puncture wounds, one on each side, both purulent. They weren’t stinking yet, she didn’t think, but she wasn’t sure if she could smell anything actually. Max looked like he should smell of old sweat and motor oil.

“Let’s make a deal.” She paused only long enough to make sure he was listening. “I’ll help you if you help me.” He perked up cautiously and then blinked impatiently. She took his wounded hand in hers and probed at one of the abscesses with her fingers until he winced and pulled his hand away. “If you take me to the Citadel, I’ll fix it,” she declared, her voice carefully hiding her uncertainty. 

The child tugged at the sleeve of his jacket and whispered something in his ear. He furrowed his brow and pressed his lips together. “Hand first.” He flexed his fingers as much as he could and winced when he collided with their limitations. “We’ll ride faster.”

Valkyrie smiled as warmly and broadly as a ghost had ever smiled. “Deal. I’ll need fire, so we’ll do it when we stop for the night.” She gave the sky a glance; maybe an hour or so left of full daylight, but Max looked at her with a certain mild amusement that made her wonder if he intended on stopping at all. “You’ll want to rest it after I’m done,” she promised. “It will hurt.”

“Already hurts.” He patted a spot behind him on his seat, and Valkyrie relaxed knowing that she had won at least the war if not this specific battle. 

She climbed on and wrapped her arms about his chest. The bike was clearly designed for one person, but she wasn’t sure she counted as a full person anymore. He didn’t seem to mind; he put the sun at their backs and took off at full speed.


	2. Beta Crucis

Max hissed like the steam rising from the dying fire as Valkyrie guided his good hand and his hot knife across the abscess on the back of his hand. Pus bloomed like a flower bud. He howled when Valkyrie pressed out the last blood-tinged dregs.

She hummed sympathetically. “Now we wash it.”

Max nodded into his jacket as he bit into the collar. He wrapped his sleeve around the handle of the metal pot of water they’d let boil and then cool. There was no more steam by now, no more sound of bubbles racing each other to the surface.

Valkyrie set her hand atop his on the jacket handle. “Almost done.” She squeezed the flesh at the base of his thumb.

Max grunted through grit teeth and nudged the bottom of the bucket with his knee. Water sloshed out, splashing his hand and the rocks below. Valkyrie turned his hand over so he could douse his palm as well. He moaned audibly on that one, loudly enough that Valkyrie' eyes darted from shadow to shadow, checking for activity.

Max dropped the now empty pot atop the drowned embers of his small fire. His hands were at his chest almost before the bucket landed. He drew long deliberate breaths through clenched jaws. He clutched his bad hand in his good and rocked himself back and forth as the last of the daylight disappeared as the sun tucked itself behind the hills, casting the sky in hot, angry red.

Valkyrie coaxed his hands apart. “Did my people give you anything?” she asked, locking down any pity in her voice. “Any salves or tinctures or...” She knew her people were low on supplies, but they wouldn’t let him go like this, not after he helped them. 

The pot he produced was tiny; he gripped it between his thighs while he twisted off the lid with his good hand. Valkyrie thought she recognised turmeric, but without smell or light she couldn’t be certain. “You need to dab that on, now, again in the morning, and then twice a day, after that to keep the infection from coming back." She added, "You should be washing it and changing the bandages that often," just to be sure. 

He obeyed begrudgingly. His body was still shaking with fever; if that wasn’t gone by morning, she didn’t know what she would do. She reminded herself it was normal for a fever to spike after surgery, which was trauma after all. 

If nothing else, she decided she could at least bore him to sleep with forced conversation. “So how do you know Furiosa?” Valkyrie asked given that Furiosa was just about the only commonality between them. 

She watched him for a while waiting for him to speak. He shrugged before finally saying, “We uhh, just met.”

She would have expected that given how Furiosa barely introduced him, but fuck if Furi hasn’t fought tooth and nail for him to have a place among them. She’d vouched for him, and for the boy too, but with The Fool, things were obviously different. _The Fool_ , Valkyrie had stupidly assumed that was his pet name and not just the word Furi used for him because she hasn’t any other. She certainly said it like a pet name, her voice tinged with equal parts exasperation and affection.

“So how did you meet her?”

He snorted. “Tried to kill me.”

Val pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows. “You must have done something to deserve it.” He said nothing. Then just when she thought he might respond, he rolled to his other side. “Max?” she ventured. “That is your name, right? The little girl told me.”

“You can see them?” he asked, his back still towards her. 

“Mm-hmm.” She set her hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for bringing me to Furi. I know you haven’t done it yet, but you will. I’ve known Furi as long as I can remember, and she vouched for you. She trusts you, so I do too.” A long silence followed, and then Valkyrie said, “I'll keep watch,” although she didn't think Max was awake to hear her. He turned his face into the crook of his arm and mumbled something incoherent; she wasn't sure if it was intended as a response or just a coincidence. 

It didn't matter. She stood, more out of habit than any real need to stretch her legs and strolled to outskirts of their camp. The night was quiet, like desert nights usually were, but this was different. She could even hear the way the sand shifted beneath the wind and beneath her feet. She stared eastward into the coming darkness.

“We’ll keep watch you mean,” said the child from before. She appeared squatting atop a boulder and rolling pebbles off it one by one. 

“Glory!” a female voice chided from behind. “Stop disturbing the environment."

“My mum,” the child explained when Valkyrie looked back. 

Max had said, _Them_ after all. Valkyrie hadn't thought much of it at the time, but she could think of no reason why a man who could see and hear her would only have one other ghost haunting him. She'd never been much of a people person in life, but now, in death, she wants nothing more than human contact.

Sure enough, a woman with red hair tied behind her head positioned herself behind the girl she called Glory. “How many times have I told you?” the woman asked in a voice coloured with sadness, “Don't mess things that aren't yours. This world isn't for us anymore.” She ran her fingers through the child’s hair as she spoke. 

Valkyrie tried to pick up a pebble of her own. No luck- her fingers passed through it. She thought that she might conjure the sensation of her gloves with their soft leather and finger guards of bone and those pale beaks might scape across the grey pebble, bone on stone, solid on solid. She found the memory of worn leather against the back of her hand, and she found how the bird skulls used to press against the backs of her fingernails uncomfortably until she became accustomed to them. She watched her gloves move as she flexed her fingers, let the sound of crinkling leather fill her ears, and drew a long slow inhale to fill her lungs with its scent. But her fingers still passed through every pebble she tried.

“How do you do that?” Valkyrie asked Glory. “How do you touch world?”

“You don't,” chided the woman.

“But she just…” Valkyrie protested, “and I can touch…”

“Max?” The woman stepped forward, arms crossed over her chest. “You can touch Max because he's different, but…” She shook her head. “It doesn't mean anything. We don't belong here. It's time for us to move on. I'm still here for my daughter because she insists on staying behind and interfering.”

“He needs me,” Glory proclaimed. She stood up with her arms akimbo. 

“He needs all of us,” said another voice from the lengthening shadows. 

And another, “We’re all here for him.” 

Dark shapes appeared one by one, people of the Before Time and of now, men, women, children, animals. Some wore the tattered rags of the Wasteland, others the garish and fragile textiles of the past. They positioned themselves around the camp so ghostly eyes stared outward in every direction. 

Glory's mother sighed and said, "We're just sad, lonely, dead people looking for meaning, purpose that isn't there. Our time is passed." 

“We all keep the watch. Won't let any of the smegs near our boy," said one more voice, this one warm and familiar. “Keep!” Val, exclaimed as her old mentor stepped into view. 

“Fancy meeting you here,” Dolores Stroke, Keeper of the Seeds, said with the same colourful laugh Valkyrie had known since her childhood. 

Keeper stood straighter now in death, taller, even without the boulder she claimed for herself. With that little help she could look straight into the eyes of the apoplectic Valkyrie. Their foreheads touched, and Valkyrie might as well have been alive again for all she felt the warmth of Keeper’s skin and the firmness of her skull. Then Keeper stepped back again, and her face bore a pleasant and purposeful expression, as full of wit and wisdom as ever. 

“We’ll let you catch up,” said the woman with the red hair. She took her daughter by the hand and led her away before Valkyrie could protest.

"I don't understand any of this,” Valkyrie said once she could find words again. 

“I don't much either." Keeper shrugged. "Best I can gather is we’ve all connected ourselves in life. So, here we are, connected in death." She knelt, moving with all the smoothness and ease of youth. "Think of it like this," she started sketching in the dust, "like spokes of a wheel with our boy here in the centre. He seems to latch onto us ghostfolk more easily than most.” 

Valkyrie shook her head. “I didn't connect with him. We hardly looked each other in the eye.”

"Ah,” Keeper whispered with a mischievous smile, “so you must be connected another way, through an intermediary.”

Valkyrie didn't need to say _Furiosa_. “I just know I have to get to her. I need to know she's alright. I need to see her.”

Keeper sat atop her rock and patted a spot beside her. “C’mere girlie, and take a look at these stars.”

They were coming out by now, first the brightest leading the way. Then the dimmer stars would fill the spaces between. Eventually they would fill the sky. 

“One star by itself can't tell you nothing, but add a few more, connect them and suddenly you have a constellation. You have a story.” She extended a single bony finger and drew imaginary lines connecting the starts making up the Southern Cross “With enough constellations you can tell the seasons. You can find where you are… And most importantly, you can find how to get where you're going.”

Valkyrie hummed pensively. “Are you also making your way to the Citadel?” 

Keeper nodded. “For that girl, the daggy one. She's got green in her fingers – just doesn't know it yet.” She ran her fingers along the embroidery on the cuff of her sleeve as she spoke. “With Max’s help, I might show her how to find it.”

Valkyrie felt a presence behind her, a different sort of presence than the army of ghosts encircling the camp. She turned, distracted. She saw a figure, a woman she decided from how the black cloth clung to the figure’s chest and hips. Dark curls snaked their way from beneath the folds of the woman's cowl. She wore a bundle tied about her hip, a bundle which cooed and wriggled in the distinctive manner of a baby, not quite an infant, not quite a child. The woman in blacked shushed her baby, or maybe she just made the motion with her mouth and Valkyrie filled in the rest. The baby kicked, thrusting a bare, pale foot into the night air. The woman tucked the foot back inside the bundle and hummed as she paced.

“If you connected with her, why do you still need him?” Valkyrie asked, still staring at the woman in black with the toddler at her hip.

“The thing is,” said Keeper as she shifted in the woman’s direction, “sometimes the people closest to you are the hardest ones to find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This version of Glory's Mother is closer to Hope from the video came than she is to her comic book incarnation.


	3. Gacrux

Max awoke while the sky was still dark. Valkyrie watched him alternate between stretching and clenching his left hand. He pressed his lips together at her in an awkward half smile while he splinted and wrapped his smallest finger. Then he set himself to packing up camp.

All the other ghosts had disappeared. Valkyrie alone rode at Max’s back when they headed west as promised. He was comfortably warm against her, not the scalding fire from before but a solid, pleasant, anchoring presence. The way his body vibrated with the hum of the road was almost as enough to make her forget that she didn't have a body of her own. 

The next time they stopped was in view of the Citadel. He nudged Valkyrie as if to say, “Your stop,” and she was so lost in awed gawking that she almost fell off the bike. The Citadel was just as she imagined, only greener and grander, and suddenly she knew that ghosts could still cry. She found herself torn between the miracles of green before her eyes and tears on her cheeks and the sudden realisation that of loneliness and helplessness: she hadn't negotiated for further passage.

“Wait. You can’t leave. How do I get inside?” she protested. 

Max shrugged, but he dismounted, and Valkyrie wanted to believe he would walk with her. Instead he pulled a bag from one of his panniers and chucked it at her feet. Metal pieces clanked together when it landed. One snuck out and gleamed in the dust with a glaring familiarity to its polished and perforated steel. “Make sure she gets this.” 

Valkyrie bent to get a better look at the carefully snapped and meticulously perforated sheet metal. She snapped her attention back to Max. “What is this?” she asked, knowing full well what it was. She just wanted to hear him say it. 

“Salvage,” he grunted in response after turning his back to her.

“And how exactly am I supposed to do that?” Valkyrie demanded, certain that any gifts for patience she'd ever possessed had died with her.

Before he can answer, a voice called to him from the nearest Citadel tower. “Back to save the day again?” The darkest of Furiosa's girls emerged from the shadows cast by the morning sun, the girl with the crossed arms, closed face, and now with swagger in her step and a rifle slung over her shoulder. She jumped down from her perch, dust lifting around her feet as she landed. Valkyrie thought her name might have been Toast, but she didn't trust her memory.

Max lifted the bag again. “Just brought this.” He didn’t need to say, _for her_ : the contents spoke for themselves.

Toast’s gaze wavered almost imperceptibly as she grasped the top of the bag then peaked inside. She swallowed then slung the bag alongside the rifle. Its metal contents clanged softly. “You should come up.” Then she straightened her back and tightened her mouth.

Max saw the look too. He fidgeted with his jacket sleeve and his hand wrappings while his eyes went wild. He took a ragged breath and turned to bolt like a mouse with its burrow in sight.

But Valkyrie grabbed him on both sides of his collar. “You will get me in there.”

“Ya don’t look so chrome either,” said Toast. Her eyes moved up and down his body. If she saw him the same way Valkyrie did, he looked like he was about to threw up. “Better come inside. We’ll take care of…” she paused, “our bike.” 

Then Toast turned and started walking towards the Citadel, the matter clearly settled. Surprisingly, Max followed. He probably even would have without Valkyrie's hands still firm on his collar, but she wasn’t about to take that chance. She held him tightly when the girl with flame-coloured hair called Capable met them at the lift. She tightened her grip, and Toast and Capable each one of his arms when he started to shake as the platform started to rise. Valkyrie didn't ease her hold on him until the door was safely shut behind them, and even then she kept him close. 

Inside the Citadel, Valkyrie found a maze of stone and metal. For all this place was green and majesty when seen from afar, its insides were dark and filled with every manner of mechanical echo. Little wonder Max was squirmy and twitchy. Even Valkyrie, with her distinct lack of a body to protect found this place disconcerting in its strange rhythms between tight passages, open corridors, and breezeways between the towers.

Somehow, the two others girls from before, the skinny, daggy one and the young one, managed to sniff Max out as he and Valkyrie were led through the Citadel. The two girls intercepted them just as Max stepped off a rope bridge. They both had arms full of what appeared to be laundry.

The young one dropped hers so she could fill her arms with Max instead. “They found you!” she exclaimed with delight.

Toast shrugged. “He just showed up.”

Capable hugged the young one, Cheedo if remembered correctly, pinning her to Max, “What matters is that he's here.”

“You really think the feral can fix her?” asked the Dag.

“He did before,” Cheedo insisted, still not letting go of Max.

“Maybe if he’d never left in the first place,” Toast muttered.

Valkyrie tugged at his sleeve. “What are they talking about?” Max just shrugged sheepishly.

“Cool it,” Capable warned Toast, as if she could get any colder.

“Yeah, might run off again, being all,” Dag paused to get into snarling, snapping character, “feral.”

Max shot Valkyrie a sharp glare as if to say, _This is all your fault_. Then he squirmed himself free enough to hold up the bag he’d brought in from the wastes.

“He wants to give this to her,” Toast explained. 

“Better be careful, she's all... What did Saffi call it?” asked Dag.

“Belligerent,” Capable answered quietly. 

“Yeah.” Dag nodded. “Belligerent.”

### 

When Saffi met them at the door to Furiosa’s room, Valkyrie wanted to leap up and hug her. She looked unimaginably exhausted but tightly wired, like she was equally likely to pass out or burst into action at any moment. She looked over Max and Capable then disguised shaking her head into turning towards the plumbing in a secluded corner of the room. 

"Close the door quietly, and then come wash up," Saffi ordered in a whisper before turning on the water and rubbing her hands together over the washing bowl. She looked directly at Max. "I think you'll need more than a light sudsing.” She forced a chuckle then assured him, “You have time. She just fell asleep. As long as you're quiet, you can get a shower.” She really laughed when she saw the expression of confusion on Max’s face. “You heard me, a real shower, hot, cold, whatever you’d like.” She pointed first to a water spout jutting out of the wall and then to a drain in a depression in the floor.

Valkyrie and Max both went slack jawed for a moment as they gawked at the pipe running along the ceiling. Valkyrie figured that there must be a tub or a sack of water on the roof like the Vuvalini used too keep. The tubing worked into the walls the old fashioned way was impressive enough, but Valkyrie couldn't imagine how this place managed cold water. She swatted at Max, wanting him to ask Saffi if she meant ground-temperature water or if they still had actual refrigeration, but he ignored her.

“C’mon,” Saffi said to Capable, “you wash up first. Then I'll put you to work so Max can have some alone time with the water. Seems they haven't seen each other in a while.”

Max started to protest, but Capable cut him off, “Organic’s orders.” Then she softened. “We won’t look, promise.”

Max shuffled his jacket off, and the women left him to himself. Valkyrie lingered where the walls narrowed between the two areas of the room. She politely looked away while he stripped off the rest of his clothes, not because she was unaccustomed to nudity but because of the intimacy of disrobing. She'd seen him asleep out of necessity, but this was different.

“Any change?” asked Capable. Saffi shook her head. “The Pups found more air tanks,” Capable offered. “They’ll be up with them shortly.”

“If we moved her to that room where you and the other girls are staying, we wouldn’t need them,” Saffi pointed out.

“We want her calm, right? She wouldn’t be calm there. I can’t imagine being sick and scared like she is and waking up there.” Capable's voice broke slightly under the weight of that last word. 

“Calm?” Saffi pressed. "Trust me, this is better.”

Valkyrie looked back to Max. He stood as still as stone beneath the facet, his eyes squeezed shut and his fingers clenched around a dial. His Adam’s apple quivered with suppressed sobs beneath his lifted chin. Valkyrie had to turn away.

She heard a soft and muffled cough from behind a curtain dividing the room. It was really just a bedlinen thrown over an old rolling rack; perhaps it used to function as a shower curtain, doubling as an evaporative cooling system. Valkyrie was certain this stone room felt wonderful in the full heat of summer with a breeze moving through the open window and the linen drenched in water. She let her imagination swell as she walked through the centre.

Startled, Furiosa snapped to attention and flattened herself against the bed. Her eyes darted, first to the spot where Valkyrie had entered her space, and then to the silhouettes of Saffi and Capable moving about the room as they went about their business. She watched them with her purple mouth tucked in the crook of her elbow as she sucked, shallow, panting breaths through chattering teeth. Her face was grey and flushed in all the wrong places, somehow both gaunt and puffy, and splotched with old bruises. Stripped down to her underwear and bandages around her ribs, she sprawled on her lumpy mattress in a nest of damp rags.

Max turned off the water, and the room went silent spare Furiosa’s laboured breathing. Even Capable and Saffi broke off their conversation about supplies and inventories. A metallic crash erupted the room into activity. Valkyrie didn’t need to look to know that Max had kicked his _salvage_ bag, probably while fighting with his pants, maybe even on purpose. He grumbled nonsensically, scuffling about; bits of metal scrapped the stone floor. Capable and Saffi went to see what all the commotion was about while Furiosa took that opportunity to slide off the bed and onto the floor. 

“Max!” Valkyrie first hissed and then shouted. “She's..." she paused, trying to find the right word, "escaping.”

Max staggered out shirtless, pants hanging unfastened from his hips and brace still undone. He crossed his arms as he scrunched his face pensively and silently, planning his approach. Then he looked to Valkyrie in a way that seemed to say, "But she doesn't want to be caught?"

Furiosa tugged and shoved at her own door, suddenly far to heavy. She slumped, gasping, for a few ragged breaths’ worth of rest and then tried again – no luck this time either. She spun on her bum so she could try shoving the door with her back; she grunted through clenched teeth as she pushed. Capable stupidly picked now to grab for Furiosa and received a sharp heel to the sternum for her trouble. 

Something broke inside Valkyrie then; like a twig, she’d bent, and bent, and now she could bend no more. Here was her Furiosa, the one person she had come back from the dead to see, three quarters dead herself. Valkyrie didn’t know what she’d expected when she floated through that same door mere minutes before. She knew Furiosa was sick; the girls had said as much, but she hadn't been prepared for this. Instead Valkyrie had thought maybe to find her Furiosa convalescing, not quite well, but very much alive and victorious, a queen talking a well-earned rest from the demands of her knew kingdom. Valkyrie shook with shame and anger at her own naïveté and powerlessness.

And here was Max. He crept along the floor so Furiosa could see him coming. He wouldn’t have surprised anyone, his bum leg dragging along behind, but somehow he knew she had to _see_ him. She was busy batting Saffi away with thrust kicks. Max only had to wait for her to wear herself down. Her strokes were already turning to flails, and her breaths, shallow gasps from the beginning, were now turning to feeble wheezes. 

Max saw his moment, and he seized it. “Hey,” he whispered, holding out a hand for her.

Furiosa swatted it away as she tried to stand, overcommitting and knocking herself over in the process. She landed on her forearms, barely turning her head to avoid smacking her face into the stone. She sat up again, but the fall had knocked out what little wind she had left and set her hacking and heaving. 

“Shh, shh.” Max was ready when she tipped backwards. “Got you.” he whispered, his hands under her shoulders guiding her back on to his chest. Her eyes closed, and she made a half clicking, half humming sound as she sunk into him. 

Saffi pressed two fingers to Furiosa’s throat and held her other hand so it hovered just over Furiosa’s mouth. “Let’s get her back to bed before she comes to. She's gotta stop doing this. She'll choke herself if we aren't careful.”

Max reluctantly passed Furiosa to Capable and started to stand, his hands shaking the entire time as he clumsily planted them on the door. He blinked hard and slow as though facing a new battle every time he had to force his eyes to reopen. He chewed his lips too until blood showed vividly against his teeth.

Max had only made it to squatting when Furiosa moaned groggily. She was curled on her side and facing Valkyrie when she opened her eyes in the kind of wide, long gaze of own either fighting her eyes into focus or fighting her dinner into staying in her belly, probably both. She sighed, too exhausted to lift her cheek from the floor. For a brief moment, Valkyrie was certain Furiosa’s eyes met hers.

“Can you hear me?” Valkyrie asked as she brought her hand to her chest. “Furiosa. Furi.”

“Furiosa,” said Capable as she crouched beside her. “Here.” She held out some sort of a mask attached to a clear tube. “This will help. Please.”

But Furiosa would have none of it. She shoved herself up to sitting and scooted as far from Capable and the others as she could. When she could go no further, Furiosa drew her legs close to her body and shifted from small and huddled to coiled and ready to pounce. Her eyes darted about the small, dark room. She spat and snarled and then hissed too hard, her eyes watering as she clutched her sides and gasped for breath. 

“It's ok,” Valkyrie whispered and Max echoed as they both moved towards her. 

“We’re real.” Max leaned in as he spoke, close enough that when Furiosa wildly swung her stump, it connected against his jaw with a dull thud. He pressed his hand against her scarred flesh, holding her there her against him. "Hey, hey," he whispered, his voice gravelly with emotion.

He stroked her shorn hair with his free hand as he pressed her short arm more even more tightly to his face. Furiosa swallowed and then blinked slowly. Her mouth twitched as she extended her hand. He clasped his free hand around hers and squeezed.

“Real,” she mouthed.

He nodded, eyes trained on her as if she were the entire world.

Valkyrie ached. She had no bones or stomach or heart, but she ached. If she had a heart, it would have jumped into her throats when Furiosa reached for her. If she had palms, they would have sweated. Her cheeks would have flushed, and she would have cursed herself for being shy around someone she'd known her entire life. Instead, she reached back.

“Real,” Furiosa said again.

“Real,” Valkyrie whispered back as their hands passed through each other.


	4. Delta Crucis

Furiosa fell asleep not long after. Apparently this was the way of things: she would thrash with febrile hallucinations until she wore herself out, sometimes finding a few brief moments of clarity on her way to unconsciousness. Those moments were becoming fewer and farther between as the infection worsened. No one knew where it started, but now it was in her lungs and probably her blood. There was nothing for it.

“What happened to her?” Valkyrie demanded.

“She... She wasn’t like this...” Max mumbled.

“Of course she wasn’t like this. Infections take time,” Saffi assured him.

“She hid it from us.” Capable made no effort to hide the anger in her voice. “We caught her in the garage half dead. She wasn't even supposed to be up and about yet. If we had just…”

“Just what, kept her under twenty-four hour surveillance for another week?” asked Saffi in an exasperated tone that seemed to say she wished they had done exactly that. 

Valkyrie had to laugh: of course Furiosa hid that she was sick. This was the girl who made all the children swear to secrecy about her being bitten by a goat because her mother wouldn't let her play with them if she knew. No one was quite sure if it was the coddling or the bed rest she feared more, but she managed to hide the particularly nasty bite and ensuing limp until she passed out in the middle of the peach harvest. Valkyrie was willing to bet Saffi would remember too if only someone could remind her. 

Max stared at a wall while the women spoke. He would have fled long before if not for Valkyrie pinning him there. Now he was frozen in panic, a ball of goalless adrenaline and directionless nerves. "I could..." He looked up expectantly, eyes full of desperation as he fumbled for words.

Saffi shook her head sympathetically, "Infection doesn’t work that way. She's gotta do this one on her own.” 

Furiosa coughed then groaned behind her curtain. Silence followed while everyone listened for more activity, but if Furiosa awoke, at least she stayed in bed. Then her breathing fell back into the gentle, shallow rasps of sleep. 

“There has to be something we can do,” Capable pressed. She was sitting at a table by the window, a thick and yellowed book open before her. “What did you say it was called?”

“Pneumonia.” Saffi’s eyes were tired and empty, but she almost smiled when Capable looked to her in frustrated confusion. “It starts with a _P._ Bacterial I'm guessing.”

“There used to be a lot of things for it,” Capable said after finding the right page.

“ _Used to be_ , but two weeks ago, I would have sworn I would never see an oxygen tank and mask again, so what do I know? For now, we just keep her calm and comfortable, cool her off when she gets too hot,” Saffi ticked of a list of little things that still felt too much like nothing. "Hydrated – that’s a big one. Did we use up all the saline solution?”

“That we've found - I'll put the Pups on lookout for more.” Capable thumbed through the book. “There's a recipe here too, doesn't look too hard.”

“Good girl.” Saffi rolled her wrists one at a time until they popped. 

Cheedo came by with a pot of warm soup not long after that. Max refused to look at her. He just took his portion as well as Furiosa’s and disappeared behind the curtain, leaving Capable and Saffi to explain to Cheedo that Max wouldn't be saving the day this time. 

Valkyrie couldn't stand to watch either of those interactions, and so she went exploring. She floated up to the gardens where she wandered among the greens. There were plants in pots and planters, some suspended from poles, and some growing straight from piles of soil set into the Citadel roof. She couldn't smell them or touch them or taste them, but they still made her weep with their broad leaves and curling vines. She curled herself in a trough between two sweet potato plants over growing the boundaries of their rows. She stayed there, letting her tears fall through their leaves as they grew into her as she watched the sunset.

When Valkyrie came back to Furiosa’s room, Saffi and Capable were gone, having left Cheedo on watch in their place. Max was snoring softly while slumped at the foot of Furiosa’s bed, his feet sticking out from beneath the curtain. He had at least eaten his soup because the bowl on the floor beside him was empty. The other was on a ledge above the bed, and Furiosa was curled on her left side with a bucket beneath her and soup smears still on her face. Max’s arm was draped over her shoulder while they both slept.

Valkyrie found herself a space next to Furiosa, too small for a person, but she liked the way Furiosa curled herself into her. And here, Valkyrie could watch the way Furiosa’s sternum lifted and fell with every breath. Valkyrie tried not to think about how that was entirely the wrong motion and instead tried to focus on the simple, glorious fact that it was happening at all.

But there was a small part of Valkyrie, a small, persistent part she'd been trying to lock down all evening, that kept probing and prodding at her mind. Why? Why bother? Why worry? What's the big deal anyway? Here she was, proof of existence after death, struggling to keep her friend alive against all odds when maybe, just maybe, she would be happier this way. She swatted the thought away and scolded herself for even having it, but she couldn't make it disappear. Instead, it solidified: could they be together? Valkyrie knew she wouldn't have stormed off to her doom for anyone else. How much had she suffered? How much did she hurt?

"I know what you're thinking, and don't do it. Don't go down that road." Keeper’s voice was sympathetic but firm. 

The only thing Valkyrie knew was that Furiosa has seen her for a mere moment at the peak of a fever. Then when it lowered, she faded with it. Who knew if that would happen again? Not Keeper – Keeper had been dead less time than Valkyrie, who was considering pointing this out. 

Arguing would do no good. "It's not like I can do anything anyway,” Valkyrie finally said, her eyes wandering again oto Furiosa, her soul aching with every little moan and every little whimper.

Keeper shrugged and said, "Well, as K.T. used to say, _Buli muntu alina ensiigo_."

Valkyrie frowned; K.T. used to say many weird things. "What does that mean?"

"Maybe you can do something; you really think you would still be here otherwise?"

"Would you really call this _being here_?" Valkyrie punched the bed for emphasis.

"What about Max's hand?"

"Still broken. You think they can make a cast here?"

"Ah, but he's not sick anymore. That's something.” 

"He's different, remember?" Her gaze rolled over Max's restless form as he kicked at some unseen thing. "That's why I can touch him." She laid a calming hand on his thigh for the simple reason that she could.

"Worth a try, isn't it?” Keeper asked, almost smiling as she too watched Max groggily assess his surroundings.

Valkyrie said nothing. Keeper was right, as usual, she had nothing to lose, and if she could help but she didn't, and she just let Furiosa die, where would that leave her? As mean as the world was, if anyone could fix it, Furiosa could given half a chance.

But I know I can't touch her, Valkyrie said exasperatedly. "I tried.”

Keeper took Valkyrie's hand in hers. “Maybe with alittle help.” 

Then Max snuck out. He crept out the door, and gently closed it behind him. He wasn't normally a quiet person, but he chose his moment well; Cheedo was absorbed in a book and Valkyrie deep in conversation. The only sound that indicated anything was amiss was the little creak Furiosa let out when Max slipped his arm off of her shoulder.

“Oop, better run,” Keeper said before disappearing.

Valkyrie followed him into the hallway. “Max!” Valkyrie shouted as she raced after him. He had a decent lead on her, but she was faster, even when she wasn't passing through walls. Making use of that trick, she easily intercepted him. “Wait.”

One look at him told her he wasn't just going out for some air. The constant wildness in his eyes was magnified, and he was flushed from more than just running. He panted as he jerked his head from side to side checking every shadow. He caught just enough of his breath to break into another panicked sprint.

Glory’s mother appeared with her arms draped over her daughter’s shoulders. “Gonna run away from her too?”

Max dodged them easily.

“Again?” Glory demanded with a stamp of her ghostly foot. 

Others came, men and women with folded arms and shaking heads, even a whining dog, They clumped before Max, blocking his way. They leaned in with as much menace and intimidation as wisps of humans ever had, not because they had strength but because they had power. They had followed Max for many days and knew his ways; they knew the guilt that kept him up at night. He glared back, gathering himself, and then charged his way through.

Valkyrie stood firm when Max’s shoulders blasted into hers.. “I'm not letting you leave like this.”

“Nothing for it,” he muttered.

“She needs you, and you need her,” Keeper added as she stepped out from the shadows. 

Valkyrie snorted, “As much as she would never admit it, its true,” but then her manner softened. “Dead or alive, you do not want to be on that woman's bad side.”

Max looked at her expectantly, eyes full of everything and nothing at once.  She had his attention; that was a start.  Valkyrie just needed something to say next. She frantically gathered her thoughts, but they collapsed into a heap the moment she tried to speak.  "We could, I mean..." She paused and started again.  "Let me see your hand." He extended it.  "Unwrap it."  

He did.  Valkyrie held it up so they both could get a better view.  It wasn't nearing a red as it was, just lined with pressure marks from the wrapping, and even the swelling had gone down.  The abcesses had turned to concave scabs on pink, healing skin.  "Better, right?  Not perfect, but better."  She looked him straight in the face while she still held his hand in hers.  "Stay and help me," Valkyrie finally said.  

“What do you have to lose, Max, besides another person haunting you?” Glory’s Mother was pointed with her words, and her aim was true. 

So there it was: Max ran because he was haunted and was haunted because he ran. Every ghost saw it but Max himself. In all her time first fighting back the Wasteland and then her time in it, Valkyrie had lost track of all the death she’d seen, but Max didn’t; he carried it with him. 

As Valkyrie stood amongst Max’s ghosts, she found she could read their faces like chapter titles in an old book. There were the Vuvalini who gave their lives to his plans, and behind them, the one of Furiosa’s girls who died along the way pregnant and ardent. There was Glory and her mother whose story Valkyrie could only guess. There were ragged people of every age and type, wasteland wanders, scavs, traders, folk of tribes she didn't recognise, their clothing becoming cleaner and brighter as Valkyrie gazed deeper into the crowd. At the back, the far back, were the Before Time bronzes, young people full of ambition and swagger. And last of all, first of all was the woman in black clutching her child to her chest.

“Let him through if that’s what he wants.” The crowd parted for the woman in black. She pulled down her hood to show the face of a mere girl, maybe 7000 days, a face whose cares left no lines. “It’s his choice to make.” 

A murmur spread through the ghosts; the First had spoken, the First who never spoke. The woman turned, first to the others in the crowd, and then to Valkyrie. She boosted the child higher so they both looked outward at the same height. She and her child stared into Valkyrie, their eyes sad and familiar, and understanding hit Valkyrie like a lightening bolt.

It must have hit Max too. He was frozen in place but for the quiver in his bottom lip. He slowly raised his arms and stepped forward, moving as if he were stuck in the muck that was once the Green Place. Then he found his traction. In an uncharacteristic flurry of motion, Max reached for his family and then stumbled through them, crashing to his hands and knees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Buli muntu alina ensiigo" I've been told is Swahili for, "Everybody's got a seed to sow." I know it more from the Michael W. Smith song of the same name because we worse forced to sing it in grade school chorus class. One beloved headcanon I'm bringing over from my primary timeline (I don't think it's actually made it into a published fic yet) is that K.T. Concannon had/has a special interest in musical theater; she probably knows the phrase from the same song as I do.


	5. Epsilon Crucis

By the time Max came back to the room, Furiosa was awake and and on her feet. She’d pulled down the cloth that used to form her curtain, and she now stood wrapped in it as she teetered on unsteady legs. She shivered from fever or actual cold, probably both considering the sun had yet to rise. She swayed when she saw Max like his very presence was a rush of blood to her limbs.

“See, I told you he was really here,” Cheedo assured her while trying to coax the curtain from her shoulders without upsetting her already tenuous equilibrium. 

Furiosa clutched her curtain-blanket even more tightly. She twisted its worn edge between her fingers as she hugged her elbows to her sides. “Max,” she rasped, “I thought…”

“I'm here,” he mumbled before she could finish saying whether she thought he’d left, or if she thought she’d dreamt him all along.

Furiosa just nodded skeptically, but she was too woozy to argue. The hallows and bruises of her face showed prominently in the lamplight. She slumped, worn by whatever activity she’d just undertaken; maybe just the simple act of being on her feet.

Cheedo tugged at the curtain again. “Here, let me hang this up so we can pee in private and then go back to bed.” 

“I don’t have to pee,” Furiosa snarled, narrowing her bloodshot eyes.

She coughed as she lowered her body onto the top of an ancient, wooden trunk, the only other piece of furniture in the room beside her bed and table. She and her curtain spread like a puddle, and she leaned against the wall with her head tilted back as she gasped for air. Cheedo offered an air mask, which Furiosa stubbornly waved away. Then Cheedo tried a cup of water, from which Furiosa accepted a few tentative sips.

Cheedo acquiesced. “So just back to the bed then?” 

“Too bloody cold,” Furiosa snapped, the bitterness in her voice barely covering an underlying desperation, and Valkyrie could only guess at how all her coughing and shivering were exacerbating whatever injuries her bandages covered.

Max nodded sympathetically and then shrugged himself out of his jacket. “Trade?” 

He held it out to her. Their fingers brushed as her hand closed around the worn battered leather, and Furiosa looked up skeptically beneath the the yellowed bruises on her brow. Max nodded again, this time quickly as if to say _Yes, really_ and then grunted impatiently while she unwrapped herself. 

“Take care of it.” He guided the jacket around her form, even rolling up the left sleeve to accommodate her. 

Furiosa curled into him slowly, drifting like a leave on a gentle but steady current. “How long will you stay?” she murmured into his shirt.

He shrugged and then folded his arms over her, careful to keep them high on her shoulders as he also sat on the trunk. “Not leaving without this. Just don't puke on it.”

She half chuckled half coughed. “No promises there.”

They both passed out that way, Furiosa first, and then Max just stayed because no one had the heart to move her. Cheedo rehung the curtain, and went about her business of pouring over Before Time books in the meagre lamplight. Cheedo jumped to her feet every time Furiosa coughed in her sleep, and sometimes Furiosa shook so hard that her rigours shook Max with her, but the rest of the night passed uneventfully. 

Saffi returned just before sunrise and interrupted Cheedo’s report to muse, “Pay attention kiddo, this is what true love looks like: his jacket on her shoulders, her drool on his.”

And as Valkyrie watched all this, she almost let herself hope that the worst had passed and that her intervention would not be needed. Maybe Max’s presence was all Furiosa needed, and Valkyrie’s work had just been to convince him to stay. Valkyrie found herself a spot on the floor just in front of the trunk and leaned back against the dried and cracked wood. She nestled her shoulders where Furiosa appeared, and she tried to parse out her thoughts. As happy as Furiosa’s recovery would have made her, Valkyrie couldn't ignore the nagging twinge of jealousy. It was small and stupid and definitely selfish, but it was there as plain and simple as the life she and Furiosa never got to share. She told herself that it didn't matter, that things were what they were and would be what they would be. 

Then she looked up to see the woman in black with a look of sympathy. "You close to her?" The woman asked almost tentatively, her gazing fixing on Valkyrie as she waited for a response.

Valkyrie nodded. "I used to be.” That time was starting to feel as distant and hazy as a dissipating dream. 

The woman hummed sympathetically, her young face grown suddenly weary. "It's hard sometimes, watching people change."

"I didn't get to watch." 

The woman sat next to her. Their legs brushed against each other with the casual ease of two people who thought nothing of the miracle that they should happen to share the same plane of existence. That touch was like a loosened cornerstone. The woman, girl, whatever she was, only had to look at Valkyrie with the barest concern to make her resolve crumble. Valkyrie’s story came tumbling out. 

"We grew up together far from here, but I lost her when she was taken, here I guess.” Valkyrie looked up to see the woman still listening attentively, and so she continued. “I always hoped she would find her way back, but then the land went sour, and all the crops died, and we would starve if we stayed, but…” Valkyrie almost laughed at her own naivete. “I just kept thinking, _but how will Furi ever find us if we leave?_ I was young and stupid, and a terrible friend because I shouldn’t have underestimated her. She found us. After almost twenty years, she found me only to lose me again the next day." 

The woman sighed. "I don't know what would have been worse, twenty years of not knowing or twenty years of watching him make the same damn mistakes." 

Valkyrie sighed too. Maybe she didn't want to know about Furiosa’s last twenty years; she could tell without asking that they hadn't been kind, not that her own were especially kind either... but something about the look in Furiosa’s eyes when she fought off her caretakers... Valkyrie shook her head; whether living or dead, the world was cruel, and that was no secret. 

"What's your name?" Valkyrie asked the woman. 

"Jessie,” she answered as if she’d been waiting for someone to ask.

“Valkyrie.”

“And this is Little Max" she said of the sprog who was developing an interest in Valkyrie's gloves. 

"Hello," Valkyrie said first in her own voice and then again with a more nasal tone as she lifted her hand and probed the child with the bird skull on her finger. He giggled in that innocent way of one oblivious to how fate had wronged him. 

She didn’t need to ask Jessie what had happened to them. The core of the puzzle was obvious now that so many pieces had been revealed, and the details were unimportant. Every life had a small number of defining moments, points on the timeline that formed a framework for everything else. Furiosa was taken, and then she returned; Max had a family, and then he lost them too young. But they weren’t lost – they were right there at his back, and as far as Valkyrie could tell they’d been there the whole time. So where Valkyrie had kept the last embers of a childish hope, Max had suffocated in a cloud of guilt.

“Did he, did Max, know you were with him until last night?”

“I don’t know. In the beginning, I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t hear me or see me. I almost gave up, but I followed him anyway. Then the child, Glory, started following him too, and he actually listened to her and she to me." Jessie smiled sadly, her eyes becoming distant until she gathered herself. “My husband is stubborn and crazy and…” she scoffed affectionately as she shifted her gaze towards Furiosa, “and a damned fool, but he’s the kindest, gentlest soul in the whole world. If he would have let you try and cross the Plains of Silence, the guilt would have destroyed him like a cancer, and if I hadn’t sent Glory to stop him, the guilt would have destroyed me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a five chapter fic, one for each of the primary star in Crux, but now it's gonna be six because I knew I had to give y'all some breathing room before we finish this up. Thanks for reading.


	6. The Jewel Box

Max and Furiosa awoke to the sounds of Capable bringing in a pot of breakfast soup. Furiosa was lucid enough to start planning a trade run, or at least Valkyrie thought so until Cheedo kept having to remind her that her crew was gone. After the fourth time, Furiosa fell silent and still. Then a coughing fit hit that brought back up the few bites of breakfast she'd been able to swallow. She refused any more food after that.

Furiosa still insisted on walking to her wet corner to piss instead of using a bedpan, but her efforts yielded minimal results. On the way back, a fever spike hit her hard and fast like a bullet to the brain. Her eyes went glassy, and she swayed and stumbled between Cheedo and Capable. Then her knees buckled, and she didn't even protest when Max scooped her up and carried her back to bed. She clung to him as rigours shook her. The girls took turns trying to make her drink, but nothing would stay down anymore. 

Saffi looked up from the bag of clear liquid she was preparing and took Furiosa’s face between her hands. “Furi, look at me.”

Furiosa’s head lolled, but her eyes opened. “Hmm?”

“We need to undress you. The fever is lying to you. You’re not cold; you’re too hot and only getting hotter. We need to get you cooled off and hydrated.”

Valkyrie summoned all her sharpness. “We have to do this now.” 

“Do what?” Max snapped back

"Something. Anything!” Valkyrie hissed. She still wasn't sure what _this_ was, but she knew she had the power to help somehow. She knew it the way she knew many things of little evidence but much importance, like how she knew Max would have come back here eventually if she had any found him, but by then at least one more ghost would have awaited him.

Saffi didn’t need to be asked twice. “Fill up that bucket with cold water and bring it to her. Capable, Cheedo pull down that curtain; grab blankets, towels, anything fabric.”

Furiosa hugged herself more tightly and glared over her folded arms. She bore her teeth in a feral snarl when Saffi reached for Max’s jacket. Saffi tried again, but Furiosa thrashed herself away. She tucked her legs beneath herself in a crouch, adrenaline returning the agility pain and illness had taken. Her eyes moved as if she was calculating, and then she dove for a spot beneath her mattress, probably looking for a weapon. 

She got nothing but a coughing fit for her troubles. She doubled over, hacking up rusty goo. Her breaths were short and sharp and her pulse rapid as a mouse’s as she held her ribcage together with her elbows.

“It's Ok.” Furiosa looked up at the sound Max’s voice.

He was crossing the floor, leaving a trail of sloshed water behind. He set the bucket down and sat beside Furiosa before slowly reaching for the jacket with both hands clearly visible. He slipped it off of her shoulders first and then freed her short arm so Saffi could connect her to a saline drip. He pulled her towards him, lifting her back. Then he slid the jacket off her right arm, all the while, carefully keeping the leather in contact with her skin. 

“Just hold onto it.” He spoke with a certain steadiness despite being obviously overwhelmed, a certain reliability.

“I’m sorry,” Furiosa creaked, and Valkyrie didn’t know if she understood or if she had just run out of fight. 

“Hmm?” Max raised his eyebrows.

“Threw up…” Her eyes found their focus, but she paused as if saying the words was making her consider doing it again, “…on your jacket.”

Max closed her palm around the collar. “Looks clean to me.”

Furiosa sniffed weakly, “Lying smeg.” 

She eased enough to allow the others to bundle her in the now soaked curtain. She still shivered, but she accepted their efforts with gritted teeth and steel resolve. She stayed conscious – that was something – her eyes glazed only from pain and distant thoughts.

“Should we send for the others?” Cheedo’s voice was small but steady as she set a cloth on Furiosa’s brow. She probably hadn’t considered her words closely; she probably had no idea what she was asking.

Saffi looked over the scene, probably gauging how many people the small room could accommodate while still allowing her space to work, but then she started shaking under the weight of the question. Only then did Valkyrie sink under it as well. Furiosa was lucid for the moment, but what if there weren’t any more lucid moments? What if she only got worse? 

“I bet you would like an update, wouldn’t you, Furi?” Capable asked, clearly trying to cover.

Furiosa spat a glob of rust and muttered, “Citadel doesn’t stop,” then set her head onto Max’s lap.

That settled it, and Cheedo left her pile of wet cloth with Capable and then walked out of the room with forcibly calm steps. Furiosa didn’t seem to mind. She closed her eyes but didn’t sleep. Max didn’t seem to mind either, not the water dripping onto this thighs when Capable handed him her washcloth or how close the others stood to him. 

Then Saffi covered Furiosa’s little groans and whimpers with the white noise of an oxygen tank and pressed the mask into Max’s hand. “You’re doing great,” she said, and Valkyrie wasn’t sure if she meant him or Furiosa.

Neither said a word. Furiosa started to turn away from the mask, tightening her mouth and pulling back her jaw so not to touch it, but once she caught a whiff of the sweet air, she surrendered. The creases in her brow eased just a little.

Valkyrie took her chance. She wedged her hand between Max’s other hand and Furiosa’s shoulder. She steadied herself and tried to focus on the distinctive feeling of flesh beneath her palm: sturdy bones, taunt but supple muscles, smooth but sun-dried skin. In her mind, Furiosa had always been fresh and young and lively. She had known intellectually that Furiosa was aging just as she was, but she could only imagine her the day she was taken: wild curls, thin and quiet mouth, steady eyes. 

When Furiosa emerged from the sand like a mirage, Valkyrie knew her instantly, that same defiance in her stance, her walk now grown from youthful haughtiness to the matured swagger of a woman who knew the taste of power. Valkyrie’s Furiosa could only increase. Even as she watched Furiosa break down on the dunes, there was something surreal about the idea of her friend as anything other than powerful and strong. Then the moment was over, and Furiosa was back to gnawing over plans with Valkyrie as they had seven thousand days before. They had grown, and the world had grown with them, its great vastness yawning before them awaiting the conquering treads of their tyres. 

But now Furiosa had faint lines around her eyes, sunspots on her shoulders, and a sprinkling of pale, silvery hairs mixed in with her dark bristles. As it always had and always will, time turns every stone to sand. "Oh, Furi, how did we get so old?” Valkyrie sighed.

“Got lucky I guess,” Furiosa muttered, eyes still closed, her words garbled by the mask.

Valkyrie’s head snapped up in surprise. “You heard me? Can you see me?”

“Mm-hmm, why not?”

“But I'm dead.” Valkyrie thought it might have been the first time she'd actually spoken the _D_ word. It floated out when she expected it to fall like a stone.

Furiosa opened her eyes and turned her moon-round and ash-grey face towards Valkyrie. “Not far behind… gone septic.”

Valkyrie looked first to Max and then to Saffi and Capable. Only Max seemed to have heard. Valkyrie tried to convince herself that Furiosa's words didn't mean anything or maybe even that it was good, that Furiosa had to be close to death for Valkyrie's healing trick, whatever it was, to work. Max was special; Max was different, but this was how the rules were supposed to work. Death was a chasm that could only be bridge from a short distance.

Valkyrie made herself steel like Furiosa had been when they turned into the canyon. “Not if I can help it.”

Max was a flurry of panicked hands and wet cloth. He chewed his lip as he plunged another sock into the water. He didn't wring it out before fitting it into Furiosa’s armpit. Water ran clear and cold down her skin.

“Max.” Furiosa lifted her hand that still held us jacket so the smooth skin on the inside of her wrist pressed gently but authoritatively against the side of his arm. “Thank you.” Their eyes met. "For everything.” She bowed her head and lowered her gaze. 

Valkyrie nudged Max close enough so he could reciprocate the gesture properly, and she guided his head when he balked. She wrapped herself around his shoulders so she could whisper in his ears, “This doesn't mean we’re giving up.” 

Valkyrie moved his hands to cradle Furiosa’s face as he pressed it against hers, and their breaths fogged both sides of the clear mask. Then, only then as the clammy skin on their foreheads met, Valkyrie finally felt the heat of Furiosa’s presence. She pressed her hands against Max’s, one above and one beneath and imagined that heat melting her so she could seep inside. 

Valkyrie saw herself as the first cold trickle of water to reach the Green Place from the mountains at the start of spring. She made her fingers as a river delta and reached out in tangled streams, soothing and softening the ground. Valkyrie moved her hands and Max’s down Furiosa's neck and down to her chest. She stopped to switch her position so both her hands were on the bottom so her palms could spread over Furiosa's top ribs. Valkyrie willed herself to flow past the leather of her gloves and the damp cloth on Furiosa’s chest. Then Valkyrie worked her way past flesh and bone to find the damaged lungs beneath.

“Breathe,” she commanded of the girl who had always insisted on being best at everything, of doing the hardest tasks, who cackled through skinned knees and banged elbows. “Breathe into me.”

Valkyrie listened to the rush of air and felt the way Furiosa expanded beneath her touch. The breath was small and lopsided, feeble but brutally stubborn. Valkyrie moved her hands deeper into Furiosa’s right side, finding the yet to be mended cracks in her ribs and rigid spots that made every laboured breath futile. 

There Valkyrie found the infection; she saw it as a mess of rust and green, not the fresh green of summer, but a putrid green of purulent rot. “Die,” she thought, forming the word like a bullet. “Die like me.” She saw the command shoot in a blaze of white from her fingertips, a true shot into the mass. “Die.” If she had a heart it would have been pounding in her ears. A spot of rust and rot disappeared, leaving behind pink tissue.

Furiosa whimpered, hugging herself tightly. “It's… no good.”

“It takes time,” Valkyrie promised because she was doing some good – she could see it. Progress was small, and the work was exhausting, but it most definitely was working.

“No,” Furiosa coughed softly, the mask shifting on her face and then finally slipping off. “I'm no good.”

Valkyrie turned to Max. “What does that mean?” Her voice quivered with exasperation and exhaustion. He just shook his head violently, and when Valkyrie felt his hands begin to lift, she ordered, “No. Don’t move. I need you here, to be my anchor.”

This did feel like a storm in its way, as if she could get lost in all the chaos if she weren't tied down to something solid. Without Max’s presence, she feared she would slip away into ether. She was already so loose and liquid as she found her way into Furiosa’s every crevice, and using her Death Touch was proving to be so draining. Maybe that's what was needed; maybe Valkyrie needed to slip away into nothing. Something had to be lost for something to be gained. 

But Max and Furiosa were both still squirming, and every time they made the slightest gaps between their forms, Valkyrie felt herself being pulled in both direction. Pain ripped through her as she strained to hold herself together, the first real, physical pain she'd felt since she died. 

“Max!” Valkyrie choked down the desperation in her voice. “Hold onto her. Move with her.” He mumbled something incoherent. “What?” Valkyrie snapped.

“Max, what are you doing?” asked Capable, standing between him and Saffi.

Max said nothing, just looked sheepishly at his hands that had found the apexes of Furiosa’s breasts. And what was he supposed to say, that he was tying a ghost to this plane while she healed Furiosa from the inside? What Valkyrie would have done for a slightly more articulate psychopomp!

“Damn fool,” Furiosa mumbled, her eyes sharp and sad at the same time. “Thinks he's helping.” She tried to cough, but it came out more of a sputter. “Doesn't get it.”

“Get what, Furiosa?” Capable asked as she leaned in to touch Furiosa’s face and replace the mask.

“Nothing here…” Furiosa drew a slow, intentional breath from the mask and then rejected it definitively, “worth saving.” She turned to Max and held up his jacket for him to take. “Save your goodness,” she ordered. “Mine’s long run out.”

Valkyrie threw herself into blasting every bit of infection to cross her path with white, searing energy. And with every shot she felt herself weakening. “Die. Die like me.”

Max’s face rose and fell with heart-crushing understanding. Then he sat there in still and quiet resignation, his hands still rising and falling with Furiosa’s chest, holding her while Saffi and Capable exploded with promises of her worth. 

“The girl who was taken is long dead,” Furiosa spat at them. “I’m what’s left, and I’ll burn out every spec of goodness you dump into me. This earth is scorched; this soil is sour.” That was the most Valkyrie had heard her speak in 7000 days, and now she was gasping for breath, drained by the effort. 

“No, Furi, that's not true,” Capable said biting back a sob. 

“Doesn't matter.” Furiosa made her gaze steel through her wet and bloodshot eyes. “I chose this... I took the knife out.” 

Saffi leaned in as well. “Does that mean you want...” 

Furiosa squeezed her eyes shut as she gave her head the slightest shake, “Not want…” She swallowed between panting breaths. “Everything hurts… everything costs.”

“Haven't we paid enough?” Capable spat back, her voice hot with rage.

Furiosa’s answer was cold and curt. “I haven't.”

“Let it be me,” Valkyrie shouted to Furiosa, to Max, to anyone who might be listening. “Let me be the cost.” 

She swelled with purpose at the thought, swelled so fully and strongly she could feel herself radiating hot and wild. She'd died in battle once, out like a candle from some quick blow she didn't even remember, but what was gained? Here was something she could do, something overwhelmingly important and... Understanding pounded her like a storm. It knocked every thought from her mind. She _knew_ with heartbreaking certainty exactly what she was taking from Furiosa and exactly why that knowledge would not make her stop.

Jessie emerged from Max’s shadow and then sat down on the bed. She wasn't wearing her cloak this time, just a simple cotton shirt and denim pants, both in pale colours and impossibly clean. Her hair was unbound, a halo of loose curls around her face. 

"Furiosa," Jessie said, "You don't know me.” 

Furiosa bristled at the sound of her name spoken by a strange voice. She narrowed her eyes, forcing them to focus on Jessie, but then the she jolted back from the multitude of ghost faces surrounding her. They were sharp and hazy, their eyes full and empty all at once. Furiosa pedalled her feet in a series of frantic and feeble kicks as she twisted and writhed. 

“It's ok,” Valkyrie promised as she strained to hold herself together. “It's ok. They're friends. They came with Max like I did.” She could tell by the way he was shaking that he was useless for backup. 

Valkyrie cried out when a Furiosa found the strength for one particularly wild thrash. She didn't think she had seams until she felt one tear. She hissed through the searing pain, char-black and fire-blue. Still she held on, feeling each of Furiosa’s panicked gasps in the palms of her hands. She laid herself down as traction and willed the sour muck to shift and ease its grip. Then she waited for her every sense of the world to fade.

Jessie leaned in slowly. “Furiosa, look at me.” Jessie held her hands out and up as their eyes met. “I hardly know you,” She said, still lingering just inside of Furiosa’s reach. “But I'm here to help – we all are.” 

Furiosa fell still and quiet, her eyes moving over the crowd, her face lifting with recognition first at Keeper and again at the blonde girl with the pregnant belly as she bit into her already cracked lip. Then she looked down, drew a long breath until she hit the wall of pain still sitting at the bottom of her chest.

Jessie shook her head, “Nope, not why I'm here, not yet anyway. You're very important to someone who is very important to me,” she chuckled as her mouth lifted in a soft smile, “a damn fool to be sure, but also a damn good judge of character, if I do say so myself.”

Furiosa’s face twisted in confusion, but she had no energy left to protest. Her eyes moved from Jessie to Max who was still transfixed and silent, his hands subconsciously gripping at Furiosa.

“It's true… what you said, “Everything hurts; everything costs, but sometimes we overcharge, and sometimes we overpay. And sometimes we need to get creative as to how we repay a debt .” She extended a hand and a gentle smile, “So let’s make a deal.” 

Furiosa hesitated before whispering, “Price?”

Jessie leaned in so their foreheads touched and only Furiosa could hear what she whispered. Furiosa didn't move except to lift her hand to meet Jessie’s and accept her offer. They closed their eyes, and white light washed over them and away in a single flash. 

Or maybe that light was just the door opening, letting extra light into the dark room. “Max!” Dag exclaimed in delight. “You brought friends.”

While everyone else was turning towards the new arrivals, Furiosa sighed and drew a long, clear breath. She winced at the end and wrapped her arms around her chest as her eyes flew open – clear, calm, wet, and red.


	7. The Emu in the Sky

Max waited to leave until Furiosa was well enough to see him off properly. Until then he clung to her like a shadow while they whispered secrets in their shared language, and Jessie helped Valkyrie piece together their vocabulary. At night he would curl into Furiosa's bed wrapped around her like the shell on a tortoise and drift off to sleep to the sounds of Valkyrie's stories of the Green Place.

When he finally did go, Valkyrie stayed behind, knowing he was in the best of care. He took most of his ghosts with him, but even those who pledged themselves to other were sad to see him go. Valkyrie stood by Furiosa when she and Max said their good-byes in their own wordless way. Then Max shook Valkyrie's hand and gave her a look that seemed to say, _She’s a handful, but I know you’ll be up for the job_. Valkyrie gave Jessie and Sprog that same expression. Then the door closed between them, and Furiosa whisked Valkyrie up to their room so they could watch Max’s car disappear into the horizon from their window.

Max came back after a time; he appeared alone to everyone but Valkyrie. She alone saw the entourage trailing behind him when he stepped out of the night. She alone saw the woman in black with her child walking beside him. Jessie's eyes were still familiar but no longer sad. She and Max linked arms, and she playfully bumped him with her shoulder while they road the lift up to the Citadel together. Valkyrie met them at the door with hugs and forehead touches along with news of the Citadel’s latest adventures.

“She's resting,” Valkyrie explained when she noticed Max looking around anxiously. “Just got back from a trade run this morning.” He nodded, still tight around his mouth. “Go on, you know the way. She'll be glad to see you, both of you.”

Furiosa gave a bleary-eyed half smile when she answered the door. She was leaning, favouring her right side like she usually did when she was too tired to disguise how her old wounds still ached. She perked up at the sight of her visitors, straightened her spine to its full length. 

“Did you finish it?” asked Valkyrie tilting her chin towards the table where Furiosa had last been working. Scraps of wire littered the surface like shrapnel. 

Furiosa yawned, “Almost… of course it could always be better.”

Max and Jessie took turns pressing their foreheads to hers. Jessie was the first to speak, “When we heard you were resting after your trade run, we were afraid…”

Furiosa shook her head and then looked Max straight in the face, “I'm fine. I'm just trying to be good, you know,” she scoffed, “responsible with my body.” She rolled her right shoulder until it popped in a clear indication that this effort had been futile. 

“So you decided to go blind from working on your arm in the dark,” Jessie teased.

“Eye strain’s not permanent damage,” Furiosa remarked wryly as she slipped her flesh arm around Max’s waist. She gave him a playful sniff, “I trust that scent isn't permanent either,” her voice was husky with mischievous intentions. She ruffled his hair with her stump when he blushed. 

Furiosa put some finishing touches on her arm while Max showered, Sprog hunted dust bunnies under the bed, and Valkyrie and Jessie chatted. They had a surprising amount of catching up to do; the last hundred days had been anything but quiet. Even Sprog had news: he was learning to talk. His words only qualified as human speech in the broadest sense, but Valkyrie marvelled at all the things the long-dead child must have to say, all the great truths of existence he must have locked away in his mind. Jessie plaited Valkyrie’s hair as she told stories of the places she had been. She kept interrupting herself with giggled apologies, saying that is had been too long since she knew anyone with hair long and clean enough to hold a nice braid. Valkyrie didn't mind; it reminded her of home and chilly nights spent with a roaring fire.

A clatter jolted Valkyrie back to the present – and Furiosa too - who jumped up from her chair. She reflexively dove before to retrieve a fallen tool before groggily rising. Her eyes darted to about the room, probably checking for witnesses, but then she stopped facing her shower. Valkyrie followed her gaze to see Max peaking out from behind the curtain hugging a towel around himself as a soft smile lifted his newly smooth cheeks to his wet eyes. 

Furiosa waited there for a moment blinking the disbelief from her tired eyes. Max was the first to break the silence as he let the curtain close, and he shuffled back into his shirt. She stood, whatever spell had been transfixing her now broken. 

Furiosa tossed him a pair of soft pants from her trunk, “Let’s go for a walk,” she said, her throat suddenly full of emotion she would surely try to blame on spending the previous night breathing Gastown air.

The gardens had thrived under Dag’s care and Keeper’s mentorship. New plants were taking root alongside the potatoes and sweet lupins. The figs and olives were taking a liking to the Citadel soils, and maybe this time next year they would bare fruit. The dates would take another few years. Maybe then, after another handful of growing seasons with nitrogen fixers, the orchard would be able to support a peach tree. 

Furiosa led the others through the gardens in a comfortable and familiar silence. She eventually chose an open spot near the edge of the tower, where the rose bushes were enjoying a late summer bloom. There was a crispness to the air, at least out here with the low bushes, that seemed to hint at a past when seasons changed reliably. 

Max slid into an bench of ancient, curling iron. Furiosa positioned herself behind him with her arms draped over his shoulders. He eased under her touch, curling his chin into her bicep. He swelled, filling his lungs with her scent. Jessie sat Sprog on his lap and nestled herself between Max’s splayed legs. She layed her head on his thigh as she stared up at the sky, her hair spreading from her like growing vines and starlight illuminating her face.

Furiosa probed her right shoulder with her short arm and gave a frustrated sigh when she failed to work out her knot. She got them often, sometimes on the right and sometimes on the left. Even when she wasn't working on or testing her new prosthetic, she stored her tension there in the webs of muscle holding her shoulder blades to her back.

“Let me,” Valkyrie offered.

Furiosa presented her back, and Valkyrie set to work. She hummed as she ran her hands over Furiosa’s shoulders. She didn’t need to conjure the memories of the textures of leather or worn cloth. She didn’t need to imagine Furiosa’s scent of healthy sweat and Citadel soil. She sighed as she ran a hand over Furiosa’s bicep taking care to avoid the fresh bruises from her Gastown run. Valkyrie kneaded tightness and stress from her old friend’s firm and sun-burnished flesh. Furiosa grunted softly between clinched jaws. The knot at the juncture of her deltoid and trapezius still didn’t give. She moaned, louder this time as she buried her face and her teeth into the sandblasted leather of Max’s jacket.

“That good?” He joked leaving, _or are you just happy to see me?_ hanging unspoken in the night air.

Furiosa tugged his collar down, and he shrugged his shoulders free so she could prod his back with her left elbow. She explored him gingerly for a few moments as she reacquainted herself with the quirks of his construction. Then she channeled her frustration at her own still tense shoulder into coaxing every sort of feral grunt and groan from the bundles of tension Max held. 

Finally, something released beneath Furiosa’s skin, and she sighed. She rolled her shoulder a few times, and then, pleased with the smoothness of the motion of her shoulder in its socket, she sunk into Valkyrie with a languid intimacy. Her eyes drifted shut as she rolled her left shoulder for comparison.

“Other one,” Furiosa hummed, and she switched to rubbing the top of Max's neck with the blade of her hand to free up her left shoulder for Valkyrie.

“What dat?”asked Sprog.

"The stars,” answered Jessie.

“No, dark,” Sprog protested.

“He means the nebula,” Max explained, briefly lifting his head and then dropping it again, exposing the back of his neck to Furiosa’s touch. 

“Ah, right.” Valkyrie smiled as she draped her arms around Furiosa’s shoulders. “The dark stuff there, darker than space, is called a nebula. It's like a cloud, but it doesn't move, at least not quickly enough for us to notice. That one…” she pointed to the dark shape beside the Southern Cross, “Is the Emu in the Sky. See how it kinda looks like a big bird with a long neck?” The others say nothing so she points to the darkest part, “There’s his head.”

“His?” Jessie teased. “Might be a boy I guess: I was always told emus make the best fathers.”

Valkyrie nodded as she tried to remember the last time she saw an emu. They used to be a flock of them that gathered just outside the Green Place from time to time. The Before Before tribes used to tell stories when they met with the Vuvalini for trade, stories of a great god’s emu wife that she had since misplaced somewhere in the sand of her mind.

“Ah,” Valkyrie finally said, “but the emu women are the fiercest warriors – kick you square in the chest if you aren't careful.”

“Sounds familiar,” Max murmured and then yowled in feigned surprise when Furiosa’s elbow dug even harder into his upper back in retaliation. “Same haircut too.”

Even Valkyrie had to laugh at that one. She imagined an emu swiping black grease across her forehead with the tip of one of her otherwise useless wings. Furiosa must have seen it as well. She chuckled begrudgingly as she wrapped her long arm about Max’s neck and pressed her short one behind for leverage. He grunted and tucked his chin into the crook of her elbow.

“That didn't take long,” Jessie said with a snicker as she rolled herself and her child out of the way to make room for Furiosa when Max inevitably popped her over his head.

“Our nice, quiet evening gone – poof,” Valkyrie agreed. 

Sprog squealed with delight and clapped his hands together as he watched his father and one of his new mothers tussle. She did go most of the way over; she clung to him and ended up on his lap rather than the soil beneath them. Then Max and Furiosa traded soft blows until they were both panting with exhaustion. He got her on her back, short arm pinning the long one against her chest before she finally tapped out. She sat up, rubbing out the old ache in her side as she caught her breath. She looked to Max who was examing a footprint she had planted on his chest in true form to her likeness.

"Welcome back, Fool," Furiosa said with a kiss to his cheek and a certain, self-satisfied smile. Then she curled herself around him with Valkyrie, Jessie and Sprog standing by. Her eyes drifted shut, and she fell asleep beneath the stars.


End file.
